Friday, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) warned President Joe Biden of turning the ongoing tension between Ukraine and Russia into another Afghanistan situation in which Americans are left behind and used as leverage.
Waltz said on Fox News Channel’s “The Faulkner Focus” that Biden, who has shot down the idea of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine to rescue Americans, needs to “send a very clear deterrence message” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Here we go with Afghanistan all over again, if you listen to what the president is saying,” Waltz declared. “We need to be sowing doubt into Putin’s decision making, and we need to be … prepared to put troops in or not. And we also need to have that leverage on the table. I think we need to send a very clear deterrence message that American citizens will not be harmed, and we are prepared to act. And at the end of the day, what we face is a Russian invasion where we have a lot of Americans trapped behind enemy lines, and now they become leverage for Putin just like they became leverage for the Taliban that they are still using to this day.”
“It is just fundamentally un-American, in my view, to leave our fellow citizens behind to abandon our allies or let terrorists or dictators dictate the terms,” he added. “But that’s exactly what Biden continues to do.”
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